San Francisco-based Stitch Health announced the completion of a Series A funding round for its care coordination platform. The amount of the investment was undisclosed, but was led by Benchmark and its general partner Bill Gurley with participation from the Y Combinator.
Stitch is another player looking to remove paper and pagers from the healthcare setting. According to the company, its cross-platform (desktop, iOS, and Android), HIPAA-compliant communication products integrate with existing EHRs, and helps providers manage patient health data through care checklists, team chat rooms, and patient conversations.
“I know firsthand the frustration of dealing with outdated healthcare technologies that are designed for fee-for-service billing, not patient-centric team collaboration,” Stitch CEO and cofounder Bharat Kilaru said in a statement. “My cofounder Jonathan Weinstein and I are looking to evolve that mindset by creating a platform geared towards healthcare teams and their patients. Coordinating quality care for a single patient requires teams of people — from the front desk staff to physicians and pharmacists and more — to work together and engage patients across multiple channels. That’s where Stitch Health comes in.”
Stitch has announced three separate tools that comprise its platform. The first, Stitch Connect, is currently available to any healthcare organization, and focuses on intra-team communications. Stitch Engage and Stitch Manage are both launching in beta. The former enables healthcare providers to communicate with patients, while the latter helps providers track their relationships with individual patients.
“The consumerization of healthcare is happening, and it’s happening fast,” Gurley, who will be joining Stitch’s board, said in a statement. “Providers are finally starting to equate patients to consumers who care deeply about their experience. Bharat and Jonathan are creating a solution that allows providers to improve that experience while also improving their own workflow. Their passion for and understanding of this shift is what drew us to the team.”
Stitch boasts more than 70 paying healthcare organizations, with more than 1.5 million messages sent by providers so far, according to the release. Its customers include provider teams at Luminance Recovery, Princeton Brain and Spine, and the Dermatology and Skin Surgery Institute. The company also said that it is currently targeting small- and medium-sized businesses looking to improve their patients’ experiences.
